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1. Ruth First 2010

   https://ncsu.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/link/0/eLvHCXMwpV1La8MwDBZrd9lp3QP2JofBDsM0D-PEUAplNGyQrZcUdgu249BdWmhX-vcnx02WUEY3dhHGDiLoSyTLehjg3s8l4yKSxA20SygrFOHCU0RKKnPmeUpS0T7MsTeBrn7KYu__G1qcQ3BNqewf4K2Z4gSOEWSkCDPSXwFtctQf44_lqnXK_mK6IJpIgEI_dVHnKlcOvkmWcJsO_k5lcauSyVY-uYxQ37fxDW0VWUgZQeckbGo62zZoiyhtqC3P1jG321G_TbJ4miRZOn5P26ul-UNFwHEz6Zq6907IUSkejuLXybR2dwNa3gdYv92OtStNeNqD46qXtjOyQjyBAz0_hU4iNmfQG8yGRpJOKclBfzY8h4d4nD49k4pdhr-EiXOIuV6sV1lkOu6ESIMLcAqmccAo90NJFRO8iFwW5SpgZnNU0Etw9rG52v_INRx9Q3cD3c_lWt9C13zAd1u5fAGovfFk

   Index On Censorship, Vol. 39, Issue 4, p. 124.

   Ruth First, a journalist who was imprisoned in 1963 and murdered in 1982, is featured. Born in Johannesburg in 1925, First was a journalist and activist committed to the struggle against apartheid ... Read more

   Ruth First, a journalist who was imprisoned in 1963 and murdered in 1982, is featured. Born in Johannesburg in 1925, First was a journalist and activist committed to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. First started her career on the weekly newspaper the Guardian. Throughout the 1950s, her investigative journalism exposed conditions for farm workers, migrant laborers and other members of the country's underclass. She was a founder member of the Congress of Democrats, which brought together the African National Congress and other organizations to work for political and human rights. Read less

   Magazine Article  |  Full Text Online

2. Ruth First 1982

   https://ncsu.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/link/0/eLvHCXMwvV1NSwMxEB1svXhq_QDrFxUEQYjNbtJsFkpFxeLBgwc9L9lsQj20FdtF_C3-WTPZjVpR8eR1CUx2kkleMi9vAI7iIhepkjmhzFDChdUkVZEmec7zQkSRzrlavsyBWXgLU3twfoq0Ktcjv1hjdONtdODE9ajHze604AADY7yfnJWLSVZdd4eqGvgF89PlBFPbGgmRLyQ8b2vAqgtVioFxIW8_p_mET0PVJzbGfUk7NEecvfe06HddWN7YPtBqIIjF9Z41asFr-FtPVcECCZ85-z2vk-jFMYIm5D96pg2tIG3dPa8m7zqsmOkGNG7U8ya0B-Mhku-7owcHTwe98XAL7kdXd5fXpK7eQHTEk4TwJLYOj_Q1s_gGpRAKd8TUFA7zUVQBK4xgJrJauyWBUyW1NFQbrF_mcJilbBu6VhieMsHTOMm5Fiq1kgpZaCYQ2VjegZPg8-yxUufIoiB6-tUTHTgMo5K5GMLEiJqaWTnPUHLInUPd8vRLm1RKiVKmogPHOARZGJCfLe78ueUurDkDccWT2YPm4qk0-9DEKXHgp-gbf1f0KQ

   Segal, Ronald

   Index On Censorship, Vol. 11, Issue 6, pp. 29 - 30.

   Ruth First, Director of the Centre for African Studies in Maputo, Mozambique, was killed by a letter bomb in her office on 17 August 1982: the final act of censorship on a lifetime of active opposi... Read more

   Ruth First, Director of the Centre for African Studies in Maputo, Mozambique, was killed by a letter bomb in her office on 17 August 1982: the final act of censorship on a lifetime of active opposition to apartheid and other forms of social injustice in South Africa. Born in Johannesburg in 1925, she was a student of social science at Witwatersrand University when she joined the Communist Party and founded a multi-racial students' group. During the great African mine strike of 1946 she was among a handful of whites who assisted the strikers. In 1947, despite risk of police harassment, she helped to expose farm labour conditions on the Bethal potato farms, writing investigative articles which led directly to a month-long boycott of potatoes organised by the Congress Alliance, headed by the African National Congress. Soon afterwards she was appointed Johannesburg editor of three radical South African investigative papers: the Guardian, the Clarion, and New Age, each in turn banned by the government. With her husband Joe Slovo, an Advocate, and with Fatima Meer (see outside back cover), she was one of the 156 people accused but acquitted in the Treason Trial of 1956. In the early 1960s she visited South West Africa (Namibia) and wrote a searing expose of apartheid in that territory which was, and remains, under United Nations mandate but is run by South Africa. The book resulted in tighter government restrictions on her activities, prohibiting any publication of her work and forbidding her from even entering newspaper offices. In 1963 she was detained and held for 117 days, much of it in solitary confinement. Shortly after her release from prison, when it was obvious that she would be rearrested, she left South Africa. During her years of exile in England, she wrote The Barrel of a Gun, a study of African coups, and a portrait of Libya entitled The Elusive Revolution. She lectured in sociology for several years at Durham University. In 1978 she returned to Africa, to take up the post in Mozambique which she held at the time of her death. As head of an international research team, she was helping to initiate plans for the new Mozambique: economic and socio-political development projects which promised to make Mozambique economically independent of South Africa. It seems she became a target in South Africa's apparent programme of destabilising its black neighbours. Ruth First's book, 117 days, an account of her confinement and interrogation under the South African 90-day detention law, was first published in 1965. It was republished by Penguin Books in November 1982, with a new preface by Ronald Segal, which we reprint below: Read less

   Magazine Article  |  Full Text Online

3. Ruth First 1982

   https://ncsu.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/link/0/eLvHCXMwY2BQMUpJMrNMtEjSNTBONdA1MUtL1rVMNEzWTUoySUoxMzRMTjJJRB3MYcyA7YXBuopdn-KoBYoBIxe0VZaE6IUbChQAsoGRDCSB0QwkiYpo0Bp1bbfMomKUUXbItltgHGqDrl4oRlqE6ws6URe6nDEItNUW0fE3tLQwQur4QwszC9CiJQMzlMLMElGwwyaz_fzj3UJ9fOJDXCNCmBmYgVkUmO_NQ51gNZYpsJaCzMRDDUStl4yhlW2IIAM_tJWs4AjxrRADU2qeMIMgdK0eUAJaIokwCNpk2IECQAEcADb6GXaiDOpuriHOHrows-OBKRk0PZGYl5pfWhwPbDpYGJqYm5oaSTAopJmlmlgam5lYGpknmSSbJVqmWRiYWaQkG5uB2jRpJpIMCoSMkSKsRJqBCxGyMgysacA0kSrLwAJKeHLgMAIAgxbcZQ

   Miliband, Ralph

   Socialist Register, Vol. 19.

   Ruth First was killed on August 17 last by a letter-bomb sent to her at the Centre of African Studies at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo. She was then the director of research at the Cent... Read more

   Ruth First was killed on August 17 last by a letter-bomb sent to her at the Centre of African Studies at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo. She was then the director of research at the Centre and had been in Mozambique for three years. No one seriously doubts that she was murdered by agents of the South African security police. They chose their victim well: for she was one of the most gifted and dedicated South African revolutionaries of our time, and she was, by virtue of her work and her writings, a source of growing influence and inspiration. Ruth First was born in Johannesburg in 1925 and was the daughter of Jewish left-wing parents who had emigrated to South Africa from Lithuania. She joined the South African Communist Party while a student at Witwatersrand University and became the editor of a series of left-wing newspapers and magazines successively banned by the government. In 1956, she and her husband Joe Slovo were among the defendants in the mass treason trial which ended in the acquittal of all the accused. In the early sixties, she was banned from journalism and was arrested in 1963: the time spent in solitary confinement was the subject of her book 117 Days. She left South Africa on her release and settled in London with her husband and three daughters. It was soon after that I came to know her, and the following brief remarks are about her as the person I knew: others who are better qualified will in due course write about her work. Adapted from the source document. Read less

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